My plan is to post translations of and comments on Ludwig Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Please feel free to comment.

Friday, November 30, 2007

6.342 And now we see the relative position of logic and mechanics.(One could also have a net consisting of different kinds of shapes, such as triangles and hexagons.)It says nothing about a picture, such as the one mentioned above, that it can be described by a net of a given form.(Since this goes for every picture of this kind.)However it does characterize the picture that it can be completely described with a specific net of a specific fineness.

Thus too it says nothing about the world that it can be described with Newtonian mechanics; but [it does say something] that it can be described in that particular way in which indeed it is described.It also says something about the world that it can be described more simply with one mechanics than with another.

So there is no absolutely right kind of mechanics, but some are more useful than others, given the way the world is.And given, presumably, what kind of thing we find easy.But what then is the relative position of logic to mechanics?Logic seems unable to choose our mechanics for us.Here I follow Wittgenstein’s comments on the translation of the penultimate sentence on p. 50 of Letters to Ogden.